


Night Terrors

by Tseecka



Series: MorMor Continuity [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Nightmares, h/c, sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tseecka/pseuds/Tseecka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim has nightmares. Seb helps him deal with them. So it's become a condition of Seb's employment, and their relationship, that the sniper falls asleep with him every night--in the same bed when he's home, and over video conferencing when he's not. </p><p>(But if you ask Jim, he'll deny he suffers any such affliction.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Terrors

The first time it happens, Jim promptly calls him back five minutes later and threatens his guns, his life and his manhood in a single expertly crafted sentence. He doesn’t take a breath, doesn’t stop to think over his words, just lays into Sebastian with a fury that the sniper hasn’t earned and didn’t deserve. 

Sebastian, being the good little soldier that he is, takes it stoically, then issues a “fuck you, boss” over the line before it crackles dead. The next time Jim hears from him, the sheik’s third wife is dead and Sebastian remembers to apologize for losing the signal. Jim lets it slide, even though he knows better. 

Seb’s as good as his word, too, and as far as Jim knows he’s never breathed a word of that night and that panicked phone call to anyone. It’d make a good story, get Sebastian a healthy commission from any one of the tabloid magazines all to eager to get a stronger image of James Moriarty (what they’ve got is barely a 10x10 pixel segment of the Big Picture, as it is, but he lets those pixels slide with the same precision and careful planning as he does everything else; the media only has that much because he wants them to). Yet the man’s never flipped on him, and Jim sometimes allows himself to entertain the notion that he never will.

Still, though, sometimes under the cover of a ballcap or behind a glossy magazine cover he’ll scan the headlines, wondering if he’ll read a story about 3 AM on a Wednesday night, when he woke up screaming and dialled Sebastian’s mobile before he’d even had the chance to think about it.

It was the first time it had ever happened; Jim can’t even remember what the nightmare was about. All he recalls is that he just sat there breathing heavily, and shaking, and choking off little sobs over the static-filled connection while Sebastian swore a blue streak in worry. 

It’s happened another five or six times since then, that he’s called Sebastian in the middle of the night, sometimes managing to speak and other times not. Four episodes have happened while they slept in the same bed, and those are the easiest to recall, Sebastian rolling over him all bare skin and long lanky limbs. He pulled Jim’s wide-eyed face into his shoulder and wrapped him up in a cocoon of warmth, not minding the scrabbling nails in his shoulders and not mentioning the dampness against his neck, until the shuddering breaths ceased and Jim fell back asleep. 

It only took once for Jim to make a change to the arrangement, effective immediately, and replace the expensive and exclusive custom mobile with a (tricked out) store model that could run the video conferencing software. It had been a bad one, too, worse than the others; he’d fallen out of bed reaching for the phone, crawled his way to the bathroom in search of a drink of water to clear the taste of blood and bile and fear from his throat. (Jim Moriarty doesn’t feel fear, he doesn’t have nightmares, but sometimes he still tastes it all the same and he’ll kill you if you suggest otherwise.) 

The line had been unable to connect; he’d sat sprawled and naked and shaking, and eventually screaming wordless noises of frustration and hurt into the mouthpiece as the automated voice told him over and over that the number he was trying to reach could not be connected. Sebastian had come home from that job, and Jim had handed him the video phone, and that night—Sebastian was only across town, waiting out a mobster in a casino, but that didn’t matter—Jim had connected the video call, his computer’s camera trained on the too-empty king-size bed, and then promptly fallen asleep. 

Sebastian had stared at the screen, bemused, alternating between watching Jim’s sleeping face and gazing through his rifle scope. When the man’s brow furrowed, he’d held his breath, only releasing it when Jim turned out and clutched a pillow to his chest. 

(It’s something to do with the network Jim has set up; the mobile network is spotty in some places that Moriarty’s influence doesn’t quite reach, or the distance is simply too great, or he’s a cheap bastard and doesn’t want to pay his own long distance fees on top of Seb’s roaming charges; but no matter where Jim Moriarty and his underlings go, there’s always, always wi-fi.)

It doesn’t take Sebastian long to understand—they never talk about it, nothing is ever, explicitly, said—that he is expected to fall asleep, with Jim, over their video conference every single night. He doesn’t mind it, though; part of him privately thrills at it, at the evidence that Jim does actually need him even if he’ll never say it aloud. It gives the sniper peace of mind, too, knowing he’ll be there if Jim has an episode and wakes up int he middle of the night, able to talk even if they can’t touch, and losing sleep for that is far preferable to losing sleep wondering if tonight Jim will wake up alone and afraid and decide one of Seb’s guns is the easiest way to make the nightmares stop. The volume is always cranked to full, and with Sebastian’s senses, all it takes is the harsh rattling gasp that precedes one of Jim’s screens for him to be awake and alert and ready to be whatever Jim needs him to be.

He’s never thanked, his time and lack of sleep goes unappreciated by his boss; but one night as he’s drifting off, cool white glow from the screen bathing his face, he sees Jim give a soft smile and reach out to touch his monitor. He rearranges his own limbs, settling his hand so that, if his eyes are bleary and half-closed, he can almost imagine their fingertips are touching or their hands are clasping, and Jim’s unguarded smile as he slips off to sleep is reward enough.


End file.
